Count With Me
by shellshock3d
Summary: Stiles finds himself in a familiar moment in time, only to realize that it was a dream. He wakes up to receive comfort from Malia. Stiles x Malia. One Shot.


He was holding a samurai sword. Wait, where did he get a samurai sword? The long polished blade felt heavy in his fingers. Stiles wasn't accustomed to using any sort of weapons. He was the kind of person to fight with his wits unlike the rest of his friends.

As he lifted his arms up, he caught his reflection in the sword. The face looking back at him wasn't his own face. Well it was his dark brown eyes and freckled face but it wasn't him. This Stiles was darker and trickier than himself. The reflection smirked back at him and lifted a finger to his lips in a malicious shushing gesture.

Panicking, he looked around him, head moving frantically. He was in a graveyard. It didn't look like the Beacon Hills graveyard, but everything seemed so blurry he couldn't make it out. It was like his vision was shifted slightly out of focus. His breathing started to come in little gasps. This wasn't right. There was something seriously wrong with him.

His attention was drawn away from the graveyard by the presence of another person there with them. Not just a person. She was a girl and even though Stiles couldn't make out the features of her face, he could tell she was familiar. It was something about her stance and the way she held herself. It reminded Stiles very much of someone he might have known, but his brain was moving too slowly and he couldn't figure out who she might be.

His body took a step forward, and then another step, all on it's own. He was no longer controlling himself. In fact, he didn't think he was ever controlling his own body. The panic started to well up in his throat again. He could feel his heart racing and his breathing starting to come quicker. The feeling was all too familiar. It was the same things he felt after his mother died. He was starting to have a panic attack.

The only thing that quelled the attack was the curiosity surrounding the identity of the woman in front of him. With every move of his legs, he could see her a little bit more clearly. Now he could see that she had dark brown hair, and that it was a little bit curly. With another step forward he could see that she was holding something. Was it something mechanical maybe? Another step and he noticed it was a bow. He didn't need to move forward to know who it was anymore. It was Allison.

Suddenly he didn't want to move forward anymore. His curiosity was gone replaced with an intense dread of what was coming next, because he'd seen all of this before. He tried to pull away from whatever was making him walk towards her with the sword in his hands, but nothing he did had any effect. It was futile for him to try.

That was when the buzzing started. It was like hundreds of televisions had all been turned onto a staticy channel all at once. He wanted to cover his ears but his hands were still tight on the sword in front of him. The sound deafened him and he could no longer hear himself think, let alone whatever Allison had opened her mouth to say.

He was closing in on her and her dark eyes were wide with terror. She knew what was going to happen even before he was aware. Their eyes met briefly before she gazed down towards the samurai sword. He tried to reach out to her, to say something, anything, but nothing was working properly and the buzzing would have drowned it out anyway.

One moment he was still over an arm's reach away from her, and the next he was standing right in front of her. It felt like someone had pressed fast forward on a television remote. She was looking at him and her face was asking him a question. He was finally able to move and he looked down. That was when he saw what he had done.

The samurai sword was now piercing Allison in the stomach, and as hard as he tried, he could not remove it, though he didn't know if he dared. Blood started weeping from the wound and covered her entire torso. It flowed freely from her and started to paint the ground of the graveyard red. Now he knew why they were in a graveyard. They were here for Allison's death. The death that he caused from the sword that he stabbed her with.

He thought this would all be over now, but as soon as he let go of the sword, Allison's mouth opened wide. Small black flies began crawling out of it one by one. They came faster and faster until a swarm was literally flying out of her mouth. They attacked him, buzzing in his ears and crawling into his nose and eyes. He couldn't see. He couldn't breath. He felt them crawling underneath his skin. They were eating away at him; tearing him apart from the inside out.

He woke up still screaming.

When he finally was able to open his eyes, he felt like he had died. The screams just kept pouring out of him. His body was covered in a cold, clammy sweat and all of his muscles ached from trying to move while he was still in his dream. He let his scream linger on until he felt like he could no longer breath. His lungs were on fire and the tiny gasps of air he was getting weren't doing anything to help him.

His door burst open, almost knocked off it's hinges, and the loudness of it all startled him even more, sending him deeper into his panic attack. He was still trying to scream when he felt a pair of strong arms around him. They wrapped themselves tightly around his chest, holding him tight, but not tightly enough that he could no longer breath.

The arms were cold but cold was good. It offset the heat that his body was giving off. After a moment of resting his head on his protector's shoulder, he was able to calm himself down. He shuddered thinking about how the dream had felt so real. It felt more real than what was happening right now.

And in that instant, in that tiny moment of thought, he started to feel panicked again. How could this be real? This was too good to be true. Having a person who loved him and wanted him couldn't be real. This wasn't right. He killed Allison and he killed Aiden. He didn't deserve any of this. Stiles was the one who should have been dead, not them.

"No, No. I'm still dreaming." He scrambled, trying to get out of the embrace of this person. They weren't real. There was no way they could be. But they were strong and they would not let him go. He smelled the forest on them. They smelled wild and uncontrollable and confident. How could someone like that be with someone like him?

"This is real Stiles." Her voice was melodic and smooth like honey, with only a tiny edge to it. He turned around to face her and was stunned by the ferocity on her face. She had brown eyes the color of chocolate and tanned skin. Her muscles were lean and taut underneath the old t-shirt he had given her to sleep in. Her hair was brown and mussed and she looked tired, like she had only just woken up.

"Malia...this is a dream." He started to remember now. She had been staying with them for the past few months after coming back from Mexico. They were dating. But it still seemed too good to be remotely true.

"It's not. How do you know if you're dreaming?" She was being so patient with him. Her arms moved away from his chest and she took his hands in her own. She was watching him with those piercing eyes of hers. Her thumb started to rub the back of his hand.

He looked down at his hands in her hands. There was something about dreams and hands. He couldn't remember. His brain still wasn't working right. He blinked and sighed. "Fingers. In dreams you have extra fingers."

She smirked then and lifted his left hand up, splaying out his fingers as if she'd done this before. Her head moved down and her cool pink lips pressed against the tip of his thumb. "One," she said. The memory of their first kiss in echo house came to haunt him.

Her head moved and she kissed the tip of his left pointer finger. "Two." He remembered teaching her everything there was to know about Star Wars and Star Trek, and the difference between the two of them. She had missed a lot.

"Three." Her lips met the top knuckle of his middle finger and she suppressed a smile. After he taught her, she taught him everything she knew about being a coyote. She knew where to hunt, where to find the best food, and how to avoid hunters.

Four and five came quickly one after the other as she kissed his ring finger and his left pinky. She didn't know that hen he was five years old he fell onto his hand off of his bike and dislocated that pinky finger. He would have to tell her.

She dropped that hand and went to his right hand. His eyes were fixed on her lips and he almost forgot to pay attention to the counting. "Six," she mumbled, kissing that thumb as well. The thumb he used to stroke her thigh as she told him she would never leave him behind.

Seven, eight, and nine passed by in a blur. Her lips, colder than his skin, kissed his right fingers, all except his pinky. She was so gentle with him, as if any moment she might break him. For just a second, he didn't care if this was a dream anymore, because he'd gladly spend his dreams with her.

"Ten." Her kiss was firm this time, harder as she finally kissed each and every last one of his fingers. All ten of them. The proper number. Now he knew he wasn't dreaming and even though he never thought he would deserve Malia, she was here with him, making sure he was safe, and this was real.

He could tell she wanted more right now, but he was in no mood to satiate the more animal side of her tonight. He let his head fall backwards onto his pillow, the one he could never sleep without, and let out a soft yawn. Realizing that was her cue, she crawled under the covers and snuggled in next to him, laying her head on his chest.

He felt safe with her here, and instinctively knew that he would have no more night terrors tonight. He was free from them as long as she was with him. She wrapped one arm around his chest and his eyes started to close, feeling bone tired and weary from the night's activities.

Stiles wasn't worried about his dad catching them at it, even though the sheriff was smart enough to know what was going on. Malia was smart enough to sneak out of his room before he woke up in the morning. He planted a gentle kiss on top of her head and she nuzzled her head into him, a little too firm, but he didn't mention it.

Just before he fell totally asleep, he had the urge to say something he had never uttered before. He had always been too shy and too self conscious to say the words to him. "I love you," he whispered softly into his coyote's ear.

"I know," he heard her say as he drifted off to a long and dreamless sleep.


End file.
